Ash Road

The road held its breath,
a ribbon of dust and intent,
until fate struck flint
against steel.

One moment forward,
the next
a star born at ground level,
wrong and furious.

Heat rose like a law
that could not be argued with.
It bent the air,
rewrote distance,
turned courage into stone
at the edge of its reach.

Inside the blaze,
small suns burst and vanished,
metal dreaming of flight
it was never meant to have.

But beneath all of it
voices.

Not sound,
but gravity.
Pulling at my chest,
calling me by who I was
before the fire decided otherwise.

I stood where training ends
and silence begins,
hands full of everything
except the one thing that mattered.

Smoke carried names.
Ash learned their shape.
The night memorized them for me.

Now sleep opens the road again.
The fire still knows my face.
The distance never changes.

They are always there,
waiting in the light.

And I am always one step away,
held back
by heat,
by time,
by a moment
that refuses to end.